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The Obleser lab | How minds and brains listen in an uncertain world

Jonas Obleser

GROUP LEADER

Jonas’ main inter­est lies in neur­al dynam­ics, that is, the moment-to-moment brain states as well as more sta­ble brain traits that char­ac­terise our per­cep­tion and behav­iour. An impor­tant ques­tion for Jonas is whether there are fea­tures of neur­al dynam­ics [MORE]

Malte Wöst­mann

senior researcher

His research focus­es on the elec­tro­phys­i­o­log­i­cal dynam­ics of human audi­to­ry atten­tion. Malte is cur­rent­ly main­ly inter­est­ed in how the neur­al sys­tem accom­plish­es the sup­pres­sion of dis­tract­ing infor­ma­tion in order to focus atten­tion on rel­e­vant information.

Sarah Tune

Senior researcher

Her main research inter­ests fol­low the ques­tion of how the human brain achieves the remark­able feat of pro­cess­ing and com­pre­hend­ing lan­guage under at times extreme­ly chal­leng­ing con­di­tions and in the face of age-relat­ed neur­al, cog­ni­tive and sen­so­ry decline.

Mohsen Alavash

Post­doc­tor­al researcher, staff sci­en­tist meg operations

His field of study focus­es on the rela­tion between brain net­works and behav­ior in chal­leng­ing lis­ten­ing tasks at the Max-Planck Insti­tute in Leipzig and cur­rent­ly at the…

Franziska Schara­ta

Lab man­ag­er, audiologist

Franziska is cur­rent­ly on parental leave. She is an excep­tion­al force in our EEG oper­a­tions and vol­un­teer liai­son. Franziska is cur­rent­ly fund­ed through our joint project with Widex Sivan­tos Audi­ol­o­gy (2023–2026)

Niels Kloost­er­man

post­doc­tor­al researcher, lec­tur­er for the dept of psychology

Research-wise, Niels is inter­est­ed in our remark­able abil­i­ty to act pur­pose­ful­ly in a com­plex and ever-chang­ing envi­ron­ment. He believes that this cog­ni­tive adapt­abil­i­ty is…

Mar­tin Orf

Post­doc­tor­al researcher

He is inter­est­ed in cre­at­ing vir­tu­al and real­is­tic sound sce­nar­ios in the spa­tial lab. Espe­cial­ly, the mech­a­nisms of ignor­ing works in such sce­nar­ios, e.g. cock­tail-par­ty, are of inter­est for him. Based on his back­ground, he is con­cerned in how active ignor­ing works espe­cial­ly in hear­ing-impaired peo­ple and to inves­ti­gate which hear­ing aid fea­tures could be used to facil­i­tate ignor­ing on an engi­neer­ing level.

Mer­le Schuckart

PHD Can­di­date

Mer­le received both her B.Sc. and M.Sc. degree in Psy­chol­o­gy from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Kiel. After hav­ing com­plet­ed her stud­ies in 2022, Mer­le joined the Audi­to­ry Cog­ni­tion Group as a PhD stu­dent with­in a col­lab­o­ra­tive project with the Max-Planck-Insti­tute for Cog­ni­tive and Brain Sci­ences in Leipzig. In her project, she inves­ti­gates the influ­ence of domain-gen­er­al net­works on nat­ur­al lan­guage processing.

Max Schulz

PHD Candidate

Max recent­ly start­ed his PhD — super­vised by Malte Wöst­mann — eager to solve ques­tions about atten­tion cap­ture and dis­trac­tion
sup­pres­sion in audi­to­ry atten­tion research. In par­tic­u­lar, he is
inter­est­ed in how dis­trac­tion is influ­enced by bot­tom-up and
top-down process­es, how these process­es are dis­played in
neu­ro-elec­tro­phys­i­o­log­i­cal cor­re­lates, and in what sense they are affect­ed in aging individuals.

Andre­ja Stajduhar

Phd Can­di­date

Andre­ja did her Bachelor’s at York Uni­ver­si­ty in Toron­to, Cana­da, where she inves­ti­gat­ed face per­cep­tion under dif­fer­ent con­di­tions in a visu­al neu­ro­science lab. She then spent two and a half years earn­ing her Master’s at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, where she was inter­est­ed in the rela­tion­ship between indi­vid­ual episod­ic auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal mem­o­ry per­for­mance and cor­ti­cal thick­ness. Her main research inter­est now lies in under­stand­ing how per­cep­tu­al infer­ence changes with age. In her free time, she enjoys cook­ing and hang­ing out with her friends!

Ric­car­do Catena

Researcher

Ric­car­do is a bio­med­ical engi­neer cur­rent­ly work­ing as a researcher in the lab, focus­ing on a machine learn­ing mod­el to obtain exci­ta­tion-inhi­bi­tion ratios from func­tion­al and struc­tur­al con­nec­tiv­i­ty data. After his BSc in bio­med­ical engi­neer­ing obtained in Italy he com­plet­ed his MSc in Bio­med­ical Engi­neer­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lübeck, with a the­sis con­duct­ed on a com­pu­ta­tion­al mod­el of neu­ronal struc­tur­al plasticity.

Research Assis­tants

Luisa Lin­de­mann
Mar­ius Möller
Matthis Andreas
Moritz Hegert
Nils Zim­mer­mann
Susan­na Keupp

Alum­ni

Alex Brand­mey­er — Post­doc­tor­al researcher
Anna Wilsch — PhD stu­dent
Antje Strauß — PhD stu­dent
Björn Her­mann — Post­doc­tor­al researcher
Dun­ja Kunke — Audi­ol­o­gist
Felix Deil­mann — Research Sci­en­tist
Frauke Kraus — PhD stu­dent
Hong-Viet Ngo — Post­doc­tor­al researcher
Jen­nifer Klotke — Audi­ol­o­gist
Jes­si­ca Her­rmann — Audi­ol­o­gist — Researcher
Julia Erb — PhD stu­dent, Post­doc­tor­al researcher
Lea Maria Schmitt — PhD stu­dent, Post­doc­tor­al researcher
Leon Franzen — Post­doc­tor­al researcher
Lorenz Fiedler — PhD stu­dent
Markus Kem­per — PhD Stu­dent
Math­ias Scharinger — Post­doc­tor­al researcher
Michael Plöchl — Post­doc­tor­al researcher
Mol­ly Hen­ry — Post­doc­tor­al researcher
Niko­las Makowka — Lab man­ag­er
Ric­car­do Cate­na — Research sci­en­tist
Sophie Herb­st — Post­doc­tor­al researcher
Sung-Joo Lim — Post­doc­tor­al researcher
Tro­by Lui — PhD student